History bears testimony to the fact that, in the past, whenever wars started it would result in huge loss both in infrastructure and in human terms. There used to be a huge damage done to the parties involved in the wars did not matter the party was a victor or a loser in the battle. Both the First and Second World Wars support this idea with huge destruction to infrastructure and human race. This compelled the nations to think of some out of the box solutions to their colonial and nefarious designs.
Therefore, colonial nations switched to economic warfare where efforts were made to strengthen one’s own economy thereby forcing the world to bend to your knees. Japan is one such example which got severely affected from atomic attacks during the Second World War but regained its glory after making advancement in technology. Now, it is claimed that there is no house in the world without Japanese household or electronic items. So now the strength of one’s economy would decide whether to indulge in war or not.
This economic warfare continues and eventually it reached South Asia. What do you think is the reason behind current withdrawal of US from Afghanistan? Simple economics is the answer. It is roughly estimated that US has spent $800 billion in Afghanistan but 61% of the Afghan territory is still under control of terrorist groups.
Similarly, India is also waging water war against Pakistan by violating the agreement made under the famous Indus Water Treaty through construction of dams over rivers that belong to Pakistan. Since both countries are atomic powers, therefore, it is not a viable option for India to get into direct war with its neighbour.
However, countries started feeling that only economic warfare might not serve their interests in the shortest of time. This very notion gives birth to the idea of hybrid warfare. In this scheme, an enemy is paralyzed from multiple angles ranging from support of local unrest to the economic warfare and from the cyber attacks to the international diplomacy.
In this context, suffice is to mention the name of Kulbhushan Jadhav, Naval Officer of India, who was caught by Pakistani intelligence from Balochistan on account of espionage charges. He himself admitted that he was involved in activities aimed at sabotaging the multibillion dollar CPEC project between Pakistan and China.
Such are the complex dynamics of international warfare where powerful nations could go to any extent to impose their own colonial and selfish designs on weaker nations.
Now when the whole world is facing the pandemic of COVID-19, there are various theories in circulation in social media. One theory states that this virus is American made and released to the world to check the growing economic progress being made by China. The argument put forwards to support this thesis is the ongoing trade war between US and China. This conjecture initially held grounds when China was the only sufferer but fizzled out when the virus spread to the rest of the world including Europe and the US itself.
Now the authors of conspiracy theories unfolded another idea that China was behind this havoc. They supported this with the fact that China pulled out of this virus in quite mysterious circumstances where the rest of the world is still suffering. Further, it is also claimed that since China was losing the trade war, therefore, it employed this tactic to gain leverage.
However, both of the theories do not hold ground. This is because the world is now global in nature and each and every country is dependent on the other to some extent. In present times, anything happening to business in any part of the world will have a trickling down effect around the globe. No country is a fool to spread virus which would disrupt the world markets and eventually lead to shut down of the businesses worldwide.
Secondly, till now, the tally of world casualties crossed over 74,000 with confirmed cases over 1.3 million and they are still rising. No region of the world is virus free ranging from Asia to Europe and Africa to Australia. This shows that this virus spreads very fast and the only way to stop it would be through development of vaccine. Unfortunately, that will take time.
Thirdly, share markets around the world are experiencing negative growth and another worldwide recession is on the horizon. These facts clearly show that no country in the world is on the driving seat as it is affecting almost all either directly or indirectly.
And lastly, the word pandemic is not new to the world as history clarifies that the Spanish influenza virus was the similar kind of disease lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected almost500 million people – about a quarter of the world’s population at the time. Considering all this, it can safely be claimed that there is no such thing as conspiracy by any nation, at play.
What is needed now is that all the nations globally work in harmony and pose a united front to this disease instead of indulging in blame game. They should share research with each other and pace up the efforts for development of vaccine against it. The world should remember that this is the best time to utilize fruits of globalization for the service of mankind.